Dreamland

Train to Forevermore

I'm standing on the platform of a deserted train station, waiting for a train...I've been standing here a long, long time now...

The last thing I remember before this is sitting at my desk and arguing on the phone with my boss... I can feel my blood pressure rising and I'm thinking I should take some of my meds to try to calm down because I know stress is bad for me and it make my heart pump way tooo fast and sometimes it makes me dizzy and sick to my stomach and I know it isn't good for me and I better do something about it pretty quick because I'm not feeling too good right now and I'm starting to get really dizzy and my left arm is starting to hurt pretty bad and everything is staring to get black around the edges and the next thing I know I'm at this deserted train station...

Time is passing... Hours, Days, Weeks, I'm not sure. I do not hunger or thirst or grow sleepy. I just stand on the platform, alone, waiting for the train...

The sky is a misty dark grey, like the time between twilight and nightfall at the end of a dull overcast day. It does not change. A lone streetlight above sheds its dim light on the platform through the fog...

A train slowly approaches the station. The dull green locomotive leading it looks to be of 1940's vintage; a postwar modern streamlined iron beast, belching it's deisel exhaust into the gloom. The train slows to a stop; the doors of a passenger car slide open in front of me.

Instead of the expected cushioned chairs, I see long wooden benches, like the pews of a church. The benches are mounted sideways, instead of facing forwards as you would expect. Most of the seats are vacant. What few passengers there are stare blankly at me as I climb aboard. I take a seat as the doors close. There is no conductor or recorded message announcing departure as the train starts moving, rolling into the night.

I look around at my fellow passengers and see someone familiar. It's Tommy, a kid I went to school with years ago. He looks the same as when I last saw him, stringy long blond hair, Led Zeppelin t-shirt, faded bellbottom jeans, bloodshot eyes like he's got a good buzz on. But he's not smiling...

The reality of the situation slowly starts to sink in. I wasn't a close friend of Tommy's, but I knew him well enough to share occasional tokes & jokes with at the weekend parties that were always happening back in those days. I last saw him while we were all drinking at the local hangout, gotta be over thirty years ago. Heard the next day wrecked his car that night and got busted up pretty bad.

The ambulance was takin' him to the hospital when it got hit head on by some drunk kid. The kid was banged up, but pretty much OK. Same with the EMTs. But Tommy was lyin' on the gurney in back of the ambulance and the impact slid him forward and snapped his spinal cord. Instant quadraplegic. Unfortunately for him, the EMTs were able to give him oxygen and keep him alive until another ambulance arrived...

I never did go to see him in the hospital, guess I was a fucking coward about facing my own mortality. This was back in the days before Christopher Reeve, and quads learning to push computer keys with pencils in their mouths to communicate, so all Tommy could do was lie there in bed hooked up to life support and watch stupid shit on TV and think about his miserable existence. People could talk to him but he couldn't say nothing...

Friends who went to visit said that after a while his eyes got really crazy. They couldn't stand to look at him like that, so they stopped going to see him. Must've really sucked, fully aware but trapped in a dead body... A couple years later I heard Tommy died, and infection or something. I bet he wished it was sooner...

So I figure I must be dead if I'm seeing Tommy, and Time must be all twisted up after you die. Thirty minutes, thirty days, thirty years, it's all the same... But I figure I might as well go over and talk to him, since I do know him and all.

"Hiya Tommy, what's happening?" I say as I sit down next to him, realizing the words are lame as soon as I speak them. He looks at me and doesn't reply, a neutral expression on his face.

"I'm really sorry I didn't come to visit you in the hospital, uh, I.."

"It's OK, man, that's over," he says, cutting me off, not unkindly.

"So what are you doing now? What happens next?" I ask him.

"I'm just waiting for my stop, so I can get off," he says.

"How do you know which station to get off at?" I ask him.

"Oh, I've been told you'll know it when you see it." he says.

I nod in reply...

A short time later the train slows to a stop. The doors slide open to reveal an empty platform under a grey foggy sky, just like the one I'd left behind.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Tommy says, rising from his seat and heading for the door.

"Good luck man, seeya around!" he says, smiling and waving from the platform as the doors shut. The train rolls on...

After a while I notice some passengers are getting up and walking down the aisle. I ask a guy where he's going. "Next car's a club car, gonna get a drink. You want one?" he says.

"Sounds good to me," I reply, and I get up to follow him.

The club car is crowded but I manage to find a seat at the bar. The bartender asks me what I'm drinking. "Vodka tonic, twist of lime," I reply

He pours the drink and hands it to me. I instinctively reach for my wallet and discover that my pants have no pockets, I have no wallet. "Sorry!" I say, embarassed.

"You must be new here," the bartender chuckles, good naturedly. "Don't sweat it, you don't need money any more, drinks are always on the house. You just pay by helping out your fellow travelers, OK?"

"I can handle that," I reply.

As I'm sipping my drink a young woman sits down next to me. She looks distressed, as if she's been crying. "Can I get you a drink?" I ask trying to be helpful.

"Just a Coke," she says.

I call for the bartender and order her soda. I look at her and remember who she is, a girl from my homeroom in high school. She was murdered back then, stabbed to death while walking home alone after hanging out with her friends at a local pizza parlor. It was a winter night, and she'd crawled, bleeding, onto the porch of a nearby house, trying to get help. The owner didn't hear her, found her frozen body on the porch the next morning... Her killer was never caught...

"I had my whole life planned out! I was a straight A student! I'd get into a good college, meet a nice guy, get married, have a couple kids.. Now I'm on this stupid train instead!" she says.

The bartender hands me the glass and I hand it to her. She takes a sip.

"You realize what this train is, Dianne," I say to her.

"NO!! NO!! I'M NOT DEAD! I CAN FIND MY STATION! I CAN GO BACK! IT'LL BE OK!"

"I'm sorry Dianne, but you know you can't do that, that was over thirty years ago,"

"It's not fair! Why would God do this! I had my whole life ahead of me!"

"I'm not a believer in divine intervention myself, Dianne, so I don't blame God or the Devil for the evil of Man. I think in life you get what you get, you just have to make the best of it and move on."

Dianne rests her head in her hands, elbows on the bar, sobbing softly. I put my arm around her. "I'm sorry," I say. "And I'm sorry I didn't go to your funeral, too. I was such a chickenshit about Death back then..."

"That's OK. I wouldn't have gone to my funeral either, if I didn't have to," she says, then laughs, hesitantly.

A while later I feel like it's time for me to go. I say goodbye to Dianne and walk back to my seat in the passenger car. The train pulls into a station and another passenger gets on. I recognize the face, he's an entertainer, a comedian who died of a drug overdose a couple years ago. He sits down next to me and asks "Hey Whatcha doin?"

"I'm just waiting for my stop, so I can get off," I say.

"How do you know which station to get off at?" he asks.

"Oh, I've been told you'll know it when you see it." I say.

He looks at me, somewhat puzzled.

"You might want to take a walk down to the next car, they've got drinks on the house," I tell him, pointing the way.

"Thanks," he says.

The train slows to a stop and the doors open to reveal a beautiful day. birds are singing in the trees and the sun is rising above the clouds. There is a golden winding trail leading through the trees into a valley below the mountains. I know I must walk this path...

I step out of the train...